Originally published October 26 2005
Researchers discover new function for auditory cortex
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany have proven that the integration of sound and touch information takes place in the auditory cortex.
Everyday, the brain accesses information from various sense organs simultaneously to create a "picture" of its environment.
This important mixture of information from various sense organs is known as "multisensory integration".
Many activities would be difficult to carry out if the brain did not receive information from a number of different sources at the same time.
If one hears a voice (for example, from a loudspeaker), and then simultaneously sees a face or a mouth moving to speak, then the voice appears to come from the mouth - even when, in the case of ventrioloquist, the mouth belongs to a dummy.
Traditionally, it has been assumed that it doesn't take place in the sensory areas, where the information from sense organs comes in, but rather in a downstream, 'higher' area of the brain known as the 'association cortex'.
The information from sense organs - in other words, what is taken in - was considered to be first processed in specific sensory areas; for example, the auditory information from the cochlea in the auditory cortex.
Only then, it was assumed, it was integrated with similarly prepared information from visual and tactile impressions.
The anatomical partitioning of the primary and secondary auditory cortexes is known in detail and the scientists can take advantage of the high spatial resolution offered by their approach.
The results clearly show that the activity in the auditory cortex by an auditory impulse is strengthened when it is combined with tactile stimulation of a hand (see Image 2).
Furthermore, the researchers found areas inside the auditory cortex that react more strongly to simultaneous impulses than to single stimuli - this is a classic criterion for the identification of multimodal integration.
The scientists suspect that one reason that sensory information is combined so early in the brain is that this way false "pictures" can be more easily prevented.
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